Can we make a supplement?

[brimstoneSalad]

This seems very clever. I wonder if it wouldn't be too costy to take it three times a day.

Well, they could probably be smaller and contain a little less of the expensive stuff if it could be taken 3x.
Maybe 15 cents each?

I think it could still come under 50 cents for the day.

I think it'd be easier to make an option where you can either take it once a day, or twice. It'd be difficult to make proper doses to satisfy both 1 and 3 times.

My thought is, it's optimal to have it allowed three times a day, because people tend to eat three meals a day.

Recommending it after each meal has some big advantages:

1. Oral hygiene (this has a phenomenal effect on overall health). A good formulation and a bit of non-sugar chewiness would help to clean teeth after a meal, similar to how dental gum works.

2. Vitamins are better absorbed, and upset the stomach less, with food, because it can mix in and be taken in slowly. This provides the most food possible to stretch it out over.

3. Enzymes. For a vegan diet, particularly the typical one which involves a lot of salads and whole grains, a phytase enzyme with a meal could provide (with a tiny amount of material) liberation of a larger number of vitamins and minerals from the food itself, making each meal in itself more nutritious. Maybe even Oxalate oxidase? Although I don't even know if that's for sale anywhere. I'm not sure how much would be required, or how much work they could do before being digested themselves, but it could be quite useful- particularly for those of us eating more raw salads and unsprouted whole grains.

Putting B12 at 250 mcg would be perfect. 500 mcg are perfectly fine aswell.
Same goes for vitamin D3 (2000 IU aren't too much).
etc. etc.

I don't think 750 mcg of B-12 or 3000 IU of D3 is too much either.

http://www.vitamindcouncil.org/about-vi ... vitamin-d/

That says no more than 10,000 IU. So 3,000 is pretty safe (and I've seen supplements with around that much in them).

A little more expensive, but maybe worth it for some people?

I don't mind spending 50 cents a day on vitamins, particularly if they're yummy and serve dual purpose as after meal breath mints. That's about my limit though.


Sounds like something like 100 mg of magnesium, vitamin C, and E each might be OK. That wouldn't cause a problem for any of them.

100 mg of magnesium won't reach the RDA if somebody just eats one, but I don't think magnesium deficiency is a big problem.

350 is the tolerable upper intake from supplements, as listed here: http://ods.od.nih.gov/factsheets/Magnes ... fessional/

However, I don't think we should put both vitamin C and E togheter.

Probably vitamin E could be reduced a lot, maybe down to the RDI. But the great thing about vitamin E is that it's a lipid soluble antioxidant, so it protects the lipid based elements of the vitamin from spoiling. D3 is carried in an oil, and contains vitamin E as a preservative, for example.
Vitamin C has it's own benefits too- like it can carry the magnesium or calcium in the form of an ascorbate.

With relatively low levels of each, maybe it wouldn't be an issue?

[thebestofenergy]

I don't think 750 mcg of B-12 or 3000 IU of D3 is too much either.

http://www.vitamindcouncil.org/about-vi ... vitamin-d/

That says no more than 10,000 IU. So 3,000 is pretty safe (and I've seen supplements with around that much in them).

A little more expensive, but maybe worth it for some people?

I don't mind spending 50 cents a day on vitamins, particularly if they're yummy and serve dual purpose as after meal breath mints. That's about my limit though.

I actually see the benefits of it. I was more worried about things such as zinc.
So, to make a quick recap:
B12 - 250 mcg of cyanocobalamin (750 mcg is ok, but it's more correct to say 250 mcg x3: in the first case it'd be 9 mcg absorbed, in the second case 12)
vitamin D3 - 1000 IU of D3 (3000 IU is ok)
iodine - 120 mcg (360 mcg is ok, the upper safe limit is 600 mcg for 9-13 years old)
vitamin B2 - 0.6 mg? (the upper safe limit is not specified, but 1.8 mg should be ok)
vitamin K - 80 mcg (upper safe limit not specified, but 240 mcg should be ok)
zinc - 5 mg to be sure? (15 mg would be ok, the upper safe limit is 23 mg for 9-13 years old)
choline - CDP / Alpha GPC 400 mg (1.2 g is ok for those who want to take it 3 times, the upper safe limit for 9-13 years old is 2 grams, while 3.5 g for adults)
calcium - 500 mg (1.5 g should be ok, the upper safe limit is 3 g for 9-13 and 2 g for 51+ years old)
EPA/DHA - 400 mg (1.2 mg is ok)
magnesium - 100 mg (300 mg should be ok, the upper safe limit is 350 mg, but the recommendation is up to 420 mg for adult males, weird)
vitamic C - 50 mg (150 mg is fine, the recommended dose for breastfeeding women is 120 mg)
vitamic E - 15 mg (45 mg is fine, the recommended dose is 11 mg for 9-13 years old and 15 for adults)
Both have high upper safe limits: 1.2-2 g vitamin C and 600-1000 mg vitamic E, so they could be increased.

Vitamin C and E are a problem for what I've said before. However, people in a chemotherapy, or that take both statin and niacin, or that take warfarin, should visit a dosctor before taking the supplement.
People should generally consult the doctor before taking a mega-multivitamin.

Would you increase or decrease anything?
I tried to balance it so that it's not too low if taken only once a day, and it's not too high if taken three times a day (also considering that you might take some of these with food).

[Viktorius_the_Third]

Have fun in this thread i will not comment anymore. Ive watched many nutritionists saying that you dont need suppliments. and i know many long term vegans (~10-20years) who dont have any deficiency.

i would love to see the study that you are reffering to here. because every nutritionist said its not reviewed and you SHOULD take it if you want to be safe...
anyhow... have fun

[brimstoneSalad]

So, to make a quick recap:
B12 - 250 mcg of cyanocobalamin (750 mcg is ok, but it's more correct to say 250 mcg x3: in the first case it'd be 9 mcg absorbed, in the second case 12)
vitamin D3 - 1000 IU of D3 (3000 IU is ok)
iodine - 120 mcg (360 mcg is ok, the upper safe limit is 600 mcg for 9-13 years old)
vitamin B2 - 0.6 mg? (the upper safe limit is not specified, but 1.8 mg should be ok)
vitamin K - 80 mcg (upper safe limit not specified, but 240 mcg should be ok)
zinc - 5 mg to be sure? (15 mg would be ok, the upper safe limit is 23 mg for 9-13 years old)
choline - CDP / Alpha GPC 400 mg (1.2 g is ok for those who want to take it 3 times, the upper safe limit for 9-13 years old is 2 grams, while 3.5 g for adults)
calcium - 500 mg (1.5 g should be ok, the upper safe limit is 3 g for 9-13 and 2 g for 51+ years old)
EPA/DHA - 400 mg (1.2 mg is ok)
magnesium - 100 mg (300 mg should be ok, the upper safe limit is 350 mg, but the recommendation is up to 420 mg for adult males, weird)
vitamic C - 50 mg (150 mg is fine, the recommended dose for breastfeeding women is 120 mg)
vitamic E - 15 mg (45 mg is fine, the recommended dose is 11 mg for 9-13 years old and 15 for adults)
Both have high upper safe limits: 1.2-2 g vitamin C and 600-1000 mg vitamic E, so they could be increased.

It sounds good.
I think I might slightly increase vitamin C, since 60mg is the RDI- in case somebody is not eating fresh food and only takes one a day. 180 is a pretty low dose still, and should even be find for people with medical conditions.

Most oncologists routinely recommend that people with cancer avoid gram-size doses of vitamin C during treatment.

http://www.cancer.org/treatment/treatme ... /vitamin-c

So, I doubt a doctor would say to avoid it, due to the low level even in three.

Vitamin E level may be higher in practice, since it is a preservative for lipid-based nutrients and vitamins.
The trouble is, I can't find any information on how much vitamin E is in those DHA/EPA supplements. They list it on the ingredients, but not in the supplement information.

I found this, about cod liver oil (it may be similar):

Each teaspoonful of Carlson Cod Liver Oil provides:
Omega-3 Fatty Acids . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1,100 mg
DHA (DocosaHexaenoic Acid) . . . . . . . . . . . 500 mg
EPA (EicosaPentaenoic Acid) . . . . . . . . . . . . 400 mg
Vitamin A . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 850 IU
Vitamin D3 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 400 IU
Vitamin E . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10 IU
(d-Alpha Tocopherol, Mixed Tocopherols and
d-Alpha Tocopheryl Acetate)
100% Norwegian Cod Liver Oil . . . . . . . . . . . . 4.6 g

Maybe 10 IU per teaspoon = 6.66 mg per tsp (4.6g).

So, based on that,15 mg should probably be OK to preserve that amount of DHA/EPA..

EPA/DHA - 400 mg (1.2 mg is ok)

I guess you mean 1.2 g. This is the only tricky component.

I'm just not sure if the nasty taste can be covered, and it could be kept preserved. It would take a lot of antioxidant to prevent them from tasting nasty.

Vitamin A is another antioxidant that can protect the oil, but in my understanding it's more dangerous (4.5 mg, or 15,000 IU, is the toxic level).
Maybe adding 1,000 IU would be OK, or 300 mcg. That seems to be safe, and is also 1/3rd the RDI (so max dosage would just be RDI).

Are there any other lipid soluble antioxidants that could be used to keep it from going rancid?

There are also the much more stable and potent synthetic food-additive antioxidants: TBHQ, BHA, and BHT
Although people tend to be scared of those.

It might be necessary to leave the EPA/DHA out due to difficulty formulating something palatable and stable, which would be unfortunate, since that's pretty important for junk food vegans to have to protect the heart.


I would add 5g/3 of creatine to each. That seems to be the typical dosage for improvement in trials, and is within the safe level.

Improved cognitive ability
A placebo-controlled double-blind experiment found that a group of subjects composed of vegetarians and vegans who took 5 grams of creatine per day for six weeks showed a significant improvement on two separate tests of fluid intelligence, Raven's Progressive Matrices, and the backward digit span test from the WAIS. The treatment group was able to repeat longer sequences of numbers from memory and had higher overall IQ scores than the control group. The researchers concluded that "supplementation with creatine significantly increased intelligence compared with placebo."[42] A subsequent study found that creatine supplements improved cognitive ability in the elderly.[43] A study on young adults (0.03 g/kg/day for six weeks, e.g., 2 g/day for a 70-kilogram (150 lb) individual) failed to find any improvements.[44]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Creatine#I ... ve_ability

The only other well known non-essential amino acid vegans don't get in diet is Taurine, but I can't find any evidence that it offers any benefit.

[brimstoneSalad]

Have fun in this thread i will not comment anymore. Ive watched many nutritionists saying that you dont need suppliments.

I'm not trying to give you a hard time, but you are mistaken.

There are no credible nutritionists or (more importantly) dieticians who will say vegans don't need B-12 supplementation.
Only new-age crystal woo-practitioners make that claim, and it's not a scientific one.

It's possible to get B-12 through pre-supplemented fortified foods (like nutritional yeast, which often has B-12 added, which IS basically a supplement) and soy milk which sometimes has added B-12, but that's just a round about way (and a less reliable way) of supplementing.

If you get it that way, you need to check labels to make sure you're getting enough.

and i know many long term vegans (~10-20years) who dont have any deficiency.

That's just not true. Either they've been eating food with added (fortified) B-12 in it, they have occasionally supplemented, or they have been cheating on their vegan diet.

You can go months without supplementing with no problems- I have. I'd supplemented a bunch some times, and some times not at all for months when I don't have any on hand. B-12 builds up in your system over time, and your reserves can keep you going for years before seeing serious symptoms.

But if any long term vegan in the first world claims to not have supplemented on B-12 at all, or regularly eaten B-12 fortified foods, he or she is lying, and probably not really vegan.

People also claim to follow other impossible diets, like breatharianism: http://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Breatharianism
You can meet people who CLAIM to be long term breatharians. That doesn't make it true.
Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence.

If somebody tells you they are a long term vegan and have never taken B-12 or eaten fortified foods, they are lying.

Plenty of people claim to be vegan, while periodically eating meat, eggs, and dairy. This is more likely than them violating established nutritional science and biology.

i would love to see the study that you are reffering to here. because every nutritionist said its not reviewed and you SHOULD take it if you want to be safe...

Sorry, I don't know what you're talking about...

What kind of study are you looking for?

[thebestofenergy]

I think I might slightly increase vitamin C, since 60mg is the RDI- in case somebody is not eating fresh food and only takes one a day. 180 is a pretty low dose still, and should even be find for people with medical conditions.

Most oncologists routinely recommend that people with cancer avoid gram-size doses of vitamin C during treatment.

http://www.cancer.org/treatment/treatme ... /vitamin-c

So, I doubt a doctor would say to avoid it, due to the low level even in three.

I agree to increase vitamin C to 60 mg.

Vitamin E level may be higher in practice, since it is a preservative for lipid-based nutrients and vitamins.
The trouble is, I can't find any information on how much vitamin E is in those DHA/EPA supplements. They list it on the ingredients, but not in the supplement information.

Can we ask a company?

By the way, I found this

The dietitians of North America (ADA and DC) recently recommended an intake of 500 mg /day of (DHA+EPA) for healthy adults without specifying a ratio. It should be pointed out that the 1999 Fatty Acid Workshop at the NIH in Bethesda (USA) advised that at least 1/3rd of the DHA+EPA intake should be represented by each of the components. In other words an overall acceptable ratio of DHA:EPA could range from 2:1 to 1:2.

So the ratio between EPA and DHA isn't a problem.

EPA/DHA - 400 mg (1.2 mg is ok)

I guess you mean 1.2 g. This is the only tricky component.

I'm just not sure if the nasty taste can be covered, and it could be kept preserved. It would take a lot of antioxidant to prevent them from tasting nasty.

Vitamin A is another antioxidant that can protect the oil, but in my understanding it's more dangerous (4.5 mg, or 15,000 IU, is the toxic level).
Maybe adding 1,000 IU would be OK, or 300 mcg. That seems to be safe, and is also 1/3rd the RDI (so max dosage would just be RDI).

Yes, it was a typo.
I think 1000 IU would be fine.
Taking some medicines (acitretin, bexarotene) in combination with a vitamin A supplement can cause dangerously high levels of vitamin A in the blood, same for the weight loss drug orlistat.
I don't know how much vitamin A would be needed to cause a problem in those cases, though.

Are there any other lipid soluble antioxidants that could be used to keep it from going rancid?

There are also the much more stable and potent synthetic food-additive antioxidants: TBHQ, BHA, and BHT
Although people tend to be scared of those.

It might be necessary to leave the EPA/DHA out due to difficulty formulating something palatable and stable, which would be unfortunate, since that's pretty important for junk food vegans to have to protect the heart.

I don't know about taste.
Here are the antioxidants found in food http://www.1stvitality.co.uk/az/antioxi ... idants.htm
I can't seem to find a list that includes all and only lipophilic (lipid soluble) antioxidants.
I really wouldn't like to leave EPA/DHA out.

I would add 5g/3 of creatine to each. That seems to be the typical dosage for improvement in trials, and is within the safe level.

The upper safe limit is not established.

Evidence suggests that oral creatine supplementation at 2-3 g/day is a safe and sufficient dose to maximize muscle creatine levels.

I think 3 g would be ok.

The only other well known non-essential amino acid vegans don't get in diet is Taurine, but I can't find any evidence that it offers any benefit.

http://www.veganhealth.org/articles/amino

Taurine is not an essential nutrient; in other words, the human body makes its own taurine.

Taurine is made by the body from cysteine, which is a protein amino acid. If you eat the recommended amounts of protein, you should be getting enough cysteine to provide enough taurine.

Vegans have been shown to have lower blood levels of taurine. It is not known whether this compromises health in any way, but very few vegans supplement with taurine, including healthy teenagers who have been vegan from birth.

I don't think it's necessary to add taurine.

[brimstoneSalad]

Small components (in micrograms or single digit milligrams)

B12 - 250 mcg @ 100% crystalline cyanocobalamin (red color)

D3 - 1000 IU of D3 (mcg?) How much oil is this dissolved in? Vitashine Cholecalciferol

Iodine- 120 mcg @ 157 mcg KI (76.45% iodine)

B2 - 600 mcg (is this pure?)

K (vitamin) - 80 mcg

Large components (in more than single digit milligrams)

Choline - CDP / Alpha GPC 400 mg (are these solids, and what % choline are they? Do we need to add more in these forms? What's the bowel tolerance?)

Calcium - 500 mg @ 2.1g Calcium Citrate 24.12% calcium (sour taste). This may be both too bulky, and too sour (we're talking lemon sour at this concentration).

Magnesium - 100 mg @ Annoyingly low atomic mass, many forms with nasty taste. I have no idea. this could be up to 1g in salt form.

C - 60 mg @ whatever mineral salt is convenient (as part of calcium, magnesium, or Zinc)

Zinc - 5 mg @ 35 mg Zinc gluconate (14.35% Zinc) or: 32 mg Zinc Ascorbate (15.73% Zinc 84.27% C (26.8 mg C))

Creatine - 1g @ creatine monohydrate (tasteless, but grainy- must be ultra-fine powder to be texturally palatable; comparable to powdered sugar)

EPA/DHA - 400 mg (how concentrated is this? How much oil base?)
......Antioxidants:
...............A - 300 mcg (1000 IU)
...............E - 15 mg (or more- we could maybe ask those companies, but I'm not sure if they'd give that info away?)
...............?+

Xylitol- 2g (sweetener, binder, preservative/antibacterial, dental health)

At least six grams of xylitol per day is thought to be needed for dental efficacy

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xylitol#Dental_care

[brimstoneSalad]

I wonder if we can find some better sources of anions, that aren't a waste of space like citrate is?

I mean, citric acid is all well and good, but it's not really contributing anything beyond making things sour.

Malic acid might be an option?
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/16555951

Although it's apparently more sour than citric acid.

There are good things said about Calcium Citrate Malate, which seems to have about the same calcium by mass as Calcium citrate: Ca6(C6H5O7)2(C4H4O5)3

It's apparently more water soluble than either calcium citrate or calcium malate alone.

Anhydrous magnesium malate has a higher concentration of Magnesium per gram.

I haven't really looked into how hygroscopic these forms are, though.

[brimstoneSalad]

Aha! I thought so...

http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/ar ... 4609000127

I was thinking "why can't we just make a salt/soap out of the DHA/EPA with the calcium and magnesium? Would that be bioavailable?"

Apparently, yes.

Also, more solid and possibly more stable.

But... it might taste like soap.
EDIT: I think it would insoluble in water, and have a waxy consistency (as a powder). Not necessarily a bad thing.

This is something that requires more research.

I want to read that paper, but I don't want to spend $40 to do it >_<

Can anybody going to university check to see if you have access to ScienceDirect with your school?


EDIT: From what I've seen so far, it looks like Calcium and Magnesium soaps are fairly widely used in feed to stabilize fats into a solid/powder form.
I'm not sure what that Calcium and Magnesium bioavailability are from that, but I would expect if the fatty acids are metabolized, so would be the Ca and Mg (ending up in ionic form in the stomach).

Compared to a typical Sodium soap molecule, the ratio might be:
at 12.34% Calcium
Or 7.9% Magnesium

But... Magnesium and calcium have a 2+ charge. So, probably double the anion.

Ca 6.60%
Mg 4.11%

So, if we were talking 400 mg EPA/DHA, that would be 428 mg of Calcium soap, or 417 mg of magnesium soap.

That's not as substantial as I had hoped. And DHA and EPA have more Carbons (22 and 20) than the reference fatty acid I used (18).

So, it's not a great way to squirrel away the calcium and magnesium without added acids.
Losing the Etyl group saves two carbons, which is probably almost a 10% weight reduction (save almost 40 mg from Etyl and around 90 mg from citrate). All in all, maybe a 130 mg reduction in mass, and as a plus potentially a more stable form of DHA/EPA.

[brimstoneSalad]

Tricalcium phosphate is 38.76% calcium by weight. Substantially better than the citrate form.

Calcium carbonate and citrate are apparently cheaper, but those are dirt cheap anyway. I doubt tricalcium phosphate would break the bank.

Trimagnesium phosphate (Magnesium phosphate tribasic) could be a good call too: 27.74% magnesium.
I don't see any reason that would randomly be harmful, but I also can't seem to find any supplements of it. It seems to be very hygroscopic too... so by the time it's done absorbing water from the air, it might not be less massive (octahydrate).


Also: Boron. How much? What form?